“…So I set up an e-mail account under the name “Janey Didit” and posted the following:

“I’m a college girl who just started school in the city and really need some cash for books and stuff. I have a bunch of panties I don’t need any more — some are super-cute, some are kind of old! It’s $25 for the not-so-nice pairs, but I have some more expensive lacy stuff too. Serious inquiries only please!”

The e-mails started coming in, but not a lot of them wanted my panties. More common were responses like, “I’m not interested in buying panties, but do you like to have your feet worshipped?” The few who did ask for underwear all wanted something more: pictures. They got a standard response:

“Hey, I don’t have pics of me in the panties, but here’s a shot for you. If you’d like, I can meet you in a cafe wearing the panties (tell me what kind you like) and then go to the bathroom, come out and discreetly give them too you. $100.”

Attached was the above picture. Some guys responded asking for more pictures of me, and I was ecstatic. They didn’t even question the $100 asking price! But when I said no pictures of my face and no pictures of me in the panties, the responses dried up. And when I started getting more responses complaining that my asking price was too high, I started to suspect that the men agreeing to $100 just wanted to get pictures of me in my underwear for free.

This was the sketchiness I was hoping to avoid, but I was desperate for a sale. I had posted my first ad nearly a week ago, my asking price had dropped from $100 to $40, but still no takers. I didn’t like this kind of bartering. Not only do I suck at negotiating, but it was making me feel like a whore after all. I’d envisioned a wallet full of Benjamins and a drawer of new panties. I hadn’t envisioned myself — and I’m cringing as I write this — making extravagant promises about how “juicy” my panties were. I was selling myself. It felt gross. I got very close to forgetting the whole thing.

Then I got an e-mail from Kris, who in a very polite and brief e-mail assured me, “I have done this a bunch of times, so I know how to handle myself and the women always leave happy.” Finally!

Kris and I worked out the details of our meeting, to take place at a Starbucks in the city. As he was the pro, I let him lead the e-mail conversation. He asked if I wanted to “upskirt” for an extra ten bucks, which meant I would walk up the subway steps in front of him, letting him get a nice “upskirt” view. I declined, and we agreed that for thirty dollars, I would meet him at 8:15 on a Monday morning for an exchange. He requested a dark thong, and gave me his number. He was going to be in a suit.

Sunday night, I was a mess. Having worn the thong all day, I had this nagging feeling that I was doing something wrong — not to the point where I was a bad person, just to the point where a psycho could rationalize killing me or a cop could find a reason to arrest me. I didn’t sleep at all. I kept waking up with my heart racing. (The discomfort of sleeping in a thong didn’t help.)

And then it was morning, and I had to go. Before I knew it I was at a Starbucks in Manhattan. As I stepped outside to call Kris (dialing *67 first to block my number), my bodyguard Megan arrived. I figured we’d pretend not to know each other, but she smiled and waved at me, causing me to briefly panic that she had somehow blown my cover.

I ignored her, called Kris and left a voicemail letting him know I was in a black trench and jeans. His voice recording sounded normal. Young. (You know who else was young? The Craigslist Killer.) Then I sat down in the bustling coffee shop and was pretending to read my book, when I saw a guy in a suit get in line — average-looking, probably in his late twenties. We made eye contact. He waved. I smiled and tried not to look like a scared puppy. I walked up to him and we made small talk about needing a cup of coffee first thing in the morning. He asked me if I’d been waiting long, and then there was an awkward pause.

“So,” I hesitated, “did you want to… see?”

“Oh, yeah.” There were people all around us, but I thrust my hand down my pants, pulling the waistband of my underwear up into view. “Okay, good.” He barely looked, like he was in a hurry to make the exchange.

In the bathroom, I put my panties in a plastic baggie and pulled on a new pair. I tried to wrap the baggie in paper to hide the contents. Back outside, Kris was waiting for his coffee. He palmed me some money in a handshake. (Neat — no one had ever done that to me before.)

I tried to palm him the panty bag, but it didn’t work as well. And we were done. Total time elapsed: less than five minutes.

I left the store, walked a couple blocks, and texted Megan and several other friends letting them know I wasn’t dead. Then I pulled the money out to look at it, and he had given me two twenties — ten more than we’d agreed to! The entire exchange had been super-easy; none of the grossness I felt from the negotiating e-mails remained. I was now forty dollars richer, with one fewer pair of panties. I didn’t feel dirty at all! (It probably helped that I’d just put on clean underwear.)”

‘Romantic is a good word to describe an entire bracket of panty fiends. A friend of mine explained it to me by saying, “Panties are the item closest to a woman’s body. They hold all the scent that makes a woman a woman. Every woman has her favorite pair. Every day they are discarded, dirty, into the hamper. They are seldom handled by anyone other than the woman who owns them. And panties are one of the most intimate items a woman owns. To have a woman’s panties is like having a little piece of her.”